Haven’t we had enough of viruses,trojans and worms on our desktops and laptops that now these villains make an entry into our mobile phone world also? What a pain! Well I never thought a mobile phone virus could be SO annoying! This being my first experience I was kind of caught off guard.

I do not own a high end phone or anything. It is a basic nokia phone with just bluetooth facility. Now who doesn’t dream of a fancy theme apart from the dull n drab default themes? So did I… Sadly the themes I downloaded were infected. Not only did these themes not work properly they also infected my phone! Within a matter of no time the analog clock display in the standard theme disappeared, the whole phone became VERY slow,some buttons stopped working… What a horror!

As always when there are problems and I dont know the answer, I close my eyes and (no not turn to god) I google!!! As usual the omniscient Google gave me the solution! God bless Google!

For those of you who are having the same problem here is the solution-format your phoneCaution: Do this ONLY when your phone battery is full else you are in for more trouble.

To format your phone, press *#7370#, then enter the lock code, which is the security code of the phone. After you format your phone it will automatically restart. You will not lose any data but all the settings will be set to the initial factory settings. After this your phone will work like a beauty!

Wikipedia says it is old and was created in 1994 but to me it is very new and a funky looking code! Though I wish it was pink and black instead of the boring white n black! 😛 ( Somethings just dont change! ). I first heard about it when my techie brother-in-law told me about some geek friends of his who has the icing of the cake in the form of a QR code of the flicker album url! I was totally fascinated by the idea and I am dedicating this post just for QR codes!

A QR Code is a matrix code (or two-dimensional bar code) created by Japanese corporation Denso-Wave in 1994. The “QR” is derived from “Quick Response”, as the creator intended the code to allow its contents to be decoded at high speed. QR Codes are common in Japan, where they are currently the most popular type of two dimensional codes. Moreover, most current Japanese mobile phones can read this code with their camera.

A giant QR Code linking to a website, to be read with a mobile phone. These kind of banners and messages invoke an instant interest in people to get to know what it really means and thus solve the purpose when it comes to getting publicity! 😛

See, film stars are the only creatures who suffer from attention deficit disorder! 😛

Some features of QR codes that make them next thing to look out for are:

High Capacity of encoding Data

Conventional bar codes are capable of storing a maximum of approximately 20 digits, QR Code is capable of handling several dozen to several hundred times more information.

This feature enables high speed reading. This is accomplished by position detection patterns in the code itself.

Structured Append Feature

QR Code can be divided into multiple data areas. Conversely, information stored in multiple QR Code symbols can be reconstructed as single data symbols.
One data symbol can be divided into up to 16 symbols, allowing printing in a narrow area.

As I already mentioned in the beginining that Qr codes are really becoming the ‘in’ thing for techies. There are some pictures of Bday cakes and chocolated where the birthday messages are encoded as QR codes! The person will have to feed this image to a QR code decoder which is inbuilt in many of the phones these days.

This is a chocolate bar with a Happy B’day QR code encoded on it! Cool huh?

After doing some research I realized that QR code was also making its presence felt in the arena of art. Dont believe it. Well see this for yourself.

Here, Artist Pedro Morales creates Qr codes like the one on the right here using small cloth flowers!!!! He calls his latest art ‘Puras Flores'(Pure Flowers).
I know it is a little hard to believe! But it is true!

I started thinking about my Childhood dreams after watching Randy Pausch’s last lecture which was about achieving your childhood dreams. At that point when I tried to think what my ‘Childhood’ dreams were I couldn’t think of anything specific except meeting Shah Rukh Khan 😛 lol. The rest that came to my mind was just not specific enough! Things like doing something similar to what Steve Irwin did (for those of you who dont know I like snakes). No, I dint want to work in a zoo all my life but something like that! I told you it wasnt specific.

That was the one thing that really got me thinking… We always have different desires at different times but it seldom sticks on… I started thinking that I wasnt focussed enough and thought my dreams were too weird to come true. Like Randy says the brick walls are there to separate those who really want it and those who dont. Probably, I was among the ones who just din’t want it so badly and so I never got it also!

But for a very long time now, it is to work for the Giant we all know as ‘Google’ …. When you dream you shouldn’t dream small things… So I started thinking BIG! And this is one of the things that did stick on! Well, now thats a little specific better than what it was earlier though I still have a long way to go in going down to the details of it! But there is something else I am clear about, whom I am going to share my cubicle with! 😛 😛 There are a few of us at college whose dream company is none other than Google! And we dream working there and sharing cubicles also! 😛 😀 I know it may sound silly but what the heck! By the way if you guys want to check out who the other google dreamers are, here are the links to their blogs http://www.bytehead.co.nr/ , http://avinashjoshi.co.in/. Sadly the others dont blog till now!

Many people often ask me why Google? why not Microsoft or any other giant! My answer always has been the same. I feel Google is the only company that DIRECTLY affects the lives of people! Right from a fifth standard student to a pHd student, for any projects or any home works Google has the answer. Like they say Google knows it all! There is even ‘The Church of Google’ which I have mentioned in my earlier post.

Getting back to ‘Why Google?’. We have all heard that we want t0 use technology for people, to change lives and that is the essence of what Google does.

There is an interesting story about the launch of Google Maps for Bangladesh. Google was supposed to launch maps for India aound the same time floods struck Bangladesh. They wanted to launch maps for Bangladesh also but there was not much time in hand. I am not surprised that in a short time the googlers made this happen! This was very much the site the NGO (Non-Governmental Organizations) used for relief operations. Talk about affecting lives of people, Google is the best example!

Another reason was meeting Dr. Prasad Ram who is the head of R&D at Google India at a conference on Web technology where he was the Keynote speaker. His talk was not complicated like many of the other talks.In fact, his was one of the very few talks that left an impact! More than the technology, he focussed on what we need to achieve from it. His spoke of Democratization of INDIA! While talking about technology either people speak about the technology in the most confusing manner possible to make themselves look like the intellectually elite class or they just DONT mention what the aim of this is keeping India in mind. He spoke about networking through NGOs to make outreach effective. That is what is making an attempt to solving the REAL problems of India! The enthusiasm I saw in him made it very clear to me what the ‘Google Spirit’ is all about. This was another major reason for this dream to stick on.

Lets all hope that Google keeps doing what it is best at, ‘Changing Lives of People’. And hoping I too would be a googler sometime. Oooh! I almost forgot to mention another reason, I absolutely love Google t-shirts!!! 😀 😀

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